Share via e-mail

Former President Bill Clinton waded into the Massachusetts Senate race today, urging supporters of Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren to volunteer for her campaign against Republican incumbent Scott Brown.

“Most people don’t think of Massachusetts as a swing state,” Clinton writes in an e-mail titled, “You’re the deciding vote.”

He adds: “But electing a Democrat at the top of the ticket isn’t enough. This year, Massachusetts will cast the deciding vote for the party that will control the United States Senate.”

Clinton, who introduced President Obama at the Democratic National Convention immediately after Warren addressed the delegates herself, was visiting Boston today after campaigning for the president in New Hampshire.

Get This Week in Politics in your inbox:

A weekly recap of the top political stories from The Globe, sent right to your email.

He hinted at Brown’s likability when he urged voters to adopt a broader perspective as they cast their vote in his hard-fought Senate race with Warren.

“No matter your personal opinion of Scott Brown, that’s the political party that he wants to set the agenda in the US Senate. It’s controlled by right-wing Republicans and Tea Party radicals who will fight tooth and nail to go back to the same failed policies that got us in trouble in the first place,” says the former president.

His e-mail included hyperlinks so readers could more easily sign-up to volunteer.

Brown spokesman Colin Reed responded by highlighting a case where the senator has attacked Warren’s legal work for LTV Steel.

“It’s ironic that Elizabeth Warren would turn to Bill Clinton for help in her race,” Reed said in a statement. “After all, it was President Clinton’s administration that was trying to stop Elizabeth Warren and LTV Steel in their attempt to deny promised health benefits to LTV’s retired workers. President Clinton called that promise ‘a solemn covenant’ with workers. Elizabeth Warren saw it as just another opportunity to line her own pockets at workers’ expense.”

The Warren campaign called that response misleading because there was never any doubt that coal miners would get full benefits. The said the Harvard Law School professor worked to make sure future retirees, employees, and victims of bankrupt companies would also be able to receive payments from those companies.

“Once again, Scott Brown is resorting to desperate, misleading attacks because he doesn’t want to talk about his record or his support for a Republican Senate,” said Warren spokeswoman Julie Edwards.